THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. XI.--MAY, 1863.--NO. LXVII.






CHARLES LAMB'S UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS.


I.

What Southey says of Cottle's shop is true of the little bookstore in a
certain old town of New England, which I used to frequent years ago, and
where I got my first peep into Chaucer, and Spenser, and Fuller, and Sir
Thomas Browne, and other renowned old authors, from whom I now derive so
much pleasure and solacement. 'Twas a place where sundry lovers of good
books used to meet and descant eloquently and enthusiastically upon the
merits and demerits of their favorite authors. I, then a young man, with
a most praiseworthy desire of reading "books that are books," but with
a most lamentable ignorance of even the names of the principal
English authors, was both a pleased and a benefited listener to the
conversations of these bookish men. Hawthorne says that to hear the
old Inspector (whom he has immortalized in the quaint and genial
introduction to the "Scarlet Letter") expatiate on fish, poultry, and
butcher's-meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing the same for